Legal challenge to car parking 'stealth tax'

'Metric martyr' Neil Herron is launching a landmark legal challenge over the use of parking tickets as a 'stealth tax'.

Neil Herron: Will challenge parking tickets at the High Court

If he is successful, drivers could demand the return of hundreds of millions of pounds of penalties for parking on single yellow lines.

Mr Herron - who led the campaign to stop the prosecution of British shopkeepers still using imperial measurements - has remortgaged his home to take on the parking industry.

He will appear at the High Court in London today to ask for a judicial review into the parking regime.

Since 1999, when the Government gave councils responsibility for handing out parking tickets - instead of the police - the number of fines has risen almost tenfold.

Some 3,568,462 fines, each worth £60, were handed out by councils outside London last year - almost seven every minute.

The total raised, which councils are allowed to keep, is up to £214m a year. Mr Herron is challenging the system on two fronts.

He will claim that many tickets are invalid, because of flaws in the regulations which cover Controlled Parking Zones.

He claims that under the wording of the current law, any zone which contains markings such as zigzags, bus lanes, or pelican and zebra crossings, is unlawful.

This would mean parking tickets issued in that zone are invalid.

Mr Herron will also argue that the adjudicator to whom motorists must appeal over a council's decision is not independent.

He claims that the Traffic Penalty Tribunal is funded by a payment - received direct from councils - of 60p for every ticket issued.

This means that if the adjudicators overturned large numbers of parking decisions, they would cut their funding - and potentially put themselves out of a job.

The campaign, which is being run by Mr Herron's Parking Appeals website, will claim this is a breach of the human right to a fair trial.

Mr Herron told the Daily Mail: 'The motoring public has become fed up with being the victim of a stealth tax by a lawless, unaccountable industry.'

The 45-year-old market trader from Sunderland is known to the public as one of the Metric Martyrs, who successfully opposed attempts by the EU to impose metric measurements on Britain.

Mr Herron turned his attention to parking after being hit by a string of fines by the local council which he believed to be unlawful. After taking his case to adjudicators, he is now seeking leave for a full Judicial Review. However, he needs to raise £50,000 to do so.

Mr Herron added: 'The law is a two-way street and it is not acceptable for councils to themselves ignore the law whilst claiming to uphold it.'

A decision on the case, which is being contested by Sunderland Council on behalf of all local authorities, is expected within a few weeks.

A spokesman for the Traffic Penalty Tribunal said: 'All the points raised are subject to Mr Herron's application to the High Court and therefore it is inappropriate for the tribunal to comment.'